~ The blog of author Danielle E. Shipley ~

Unapologetically Yours

I’ve been seeing something in the social media world that disturbs me.

It’s this idea that if an author – (or any kind of person with an accomplishment they’d ideally like to be paid for, but we’ll use authors as the example, since that’s kind of my crowd) – wants to tell the world about their book, they’ve got to do it a certain way.

They’ve got to be all super-casual, or just kind of sneak it in, or try to be cute about it in the hopes that the cuteness will offset the fact that, le gasp, they dared to inform the public that their book is available for sale. I’ve even seen a tweet with the phrase “sorry for the shameless plug”.

Sorry?

Sorry?

The discord between “sorry” and “shameless” aside, why in the world is this person apologizing?

Why is it frowned upon to just boldly say, “I’ve finished a book! It’s available here! Go buy!”? You’re not twisting anybody’s arm. They’ll check out the link, or they won’t. They’ll buy the book, or they won’t. It’s not a gun to the head, it’s an advertisement.

Let’s go back to basics for a moment, here. Quick pop quiz. What is a writer’s job?

a) Writing

b) Selling what they write

c) Devoting their creative word energy to hilarious/relatable/inspirational tweets/statuses about anything but their book and hoping the power of positive thinking will be enough to write and sell their books for them

d) Mostly a), with some b) thrown in, in the hopes of maybe possibly earning a livelihood

Newsflash: The answer isn’t C.

Newsflash number 2: Declaring in your own webspace that you’ve got a product for sale is not spam.

Those things are invasive and rude in the way wallpapering your neighbor’s house in self-promotional flyers is invasive and rude. (And, y’know, vandalism.) But guess what? You can wallpaper your own house anyway you like, because it’s your house. Just like your website/blog/social media account is yours. Yours on which to say what you want to say. Is posting absolutely nothing but links to your books the most entertaining thing in the world? No. But neither is it a crime (unlike vandalism), and it’s nothing worth receiving dirty looks for.

Look, authors (and artists of all stripes). I know confidence can be hard to hang onto. Doubting yourself and the worth of your work is par for the course. But you poured your heart into this. You dedicated hours – weeks and months and years of hours – into this work of art that the world would never have had in quite that form without you. After nine months of pregnancy, does a mother deliver a baby and then shamefacedly whisper the birth announcement? NO! After years of study, does a researcher make a scientific breakthrough and just kind of hope that somebody will notice? NO! After I-don’t-even-know-how-long of training, does a marathon runner cross the finish line and never speak of the race again? No, no, NO!

Fellow authors, you have achieved something that, for many, is nothing more than a dream – that, once upon a time, was no more than a dream for you. You created a story – a product that can potentially touch people’s lives in a way so very few things can. The laborer is worthy of his wages! You deserve, at bare minimum, to be able to say, with all due levels of pride, that you wrote this thing! You have every right to point to it and claim it as yours, without apology!

Now, make like an introvert with stage fright and sociophobia who spends her summer weekends at a Renaissance Faire interacting with strangers anyway, and hold your head up high in the name of what you love.

11 thoughts on “Unapologetically Yours”

Agree! That being said, there’s a limit to how much self-promotion you want to do. Writing a post saying GUYS OMG I JUST PUBLISHED A BOOK! is awesome. Writing a post every week saying “Buy my book” is irritating. I think that’s where the creativity comes in — if you want to keep reminding people that you have a book for sale after the initial WOOHOO! period post-publication, you have to be sneaky about it.

I know… I feel so awkward when I mention my book even on my own blog… like it’s bragging and egotistical… when really I just want people to know it’s out there… like hey I accomplished something… so thanks for saying this… cause you’re totally right…

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Me. Hello!

To the lovers of language...
To the ravenous readers...
To those who talk like a thesaurus, not to show off, but simply because they like it and they can...
To you I say, Ever On Word!
~ Danielle E. Shipley
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